Antivaccine nonsense
oracknows | March 16, 2009By way of badscience.net:
Speak it, brother Ben!
Oh, and don't be too hard on your hairstyle and clothing in that one. I could totally picture you as an incarnation of The Doctor in that getup. That sweater vest does look a bit Peter Davison-ish, although the curly locks do rather echo Tom Baker.
oracknows | March 16, 2009The antivaccine counterattack against Brian Deer continues.
As you recall, about a month ago British reporter Brian Deer published an exposé, a tour de force of investigative journalism that led him to discover that Andre Wakefield had not only had incredibly blatant undisclosed conflicts of interest (his having been in the pocket of trial lawyers suing vaccine manufacturers and his forgetting to mention the little fact that he had been developing a competing version of a measles vaccine that he had been hoping to market) when he published his infamous 1998 Lancet paper linking MMR to…
oracknows | March 14, 2009I love it when someone does something like this, namely pwning an antivaccine video like The Truth About Vaccines:
It's not perfect, but I love it. Now if only more people would do something similar on YouTube. I'm tired of seeing titles like VACCINES KILL INNOCENT CHILDREN! - Hundreds and More Likely Thousands of Children are Murdered Each Year by Vaccines. Vaccinations Are Part of A Hidden Crime Against Our Children. Vaccines Do NOT Prevent Disease - They Are The Disease.
Hmmm. Maybe Lu could take that one on next...
oracknows | March 11, 2009I know I've been hard on a lot of legislators, including woo-friendly clods such as Tom Harkin, Ron Paul, and Dan Burton. Occasionally, though, a legislator will show that he "gets it" (or at least hasn't drunk the Kool Aid). Forwarded to me was a letter sent from Representative John Linder (R-GA) in response to a letter from the Autism Action Network, apparently upset over the IACC's not being as excited about throwing good money after bad studying the scientifically discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. Here is Mr. Linder's response, and it's a good one (for a politician, anyway):…
oracknows | March 10, 2009Crank alert!
Age of Autism has announced that David Kirby and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will be on the David Bender Show at 1:15 PM today.
It would be nice if, to counter the antivaccine activists, reality-based listeners would call in, although I am very pessimistic that Bender would give them a fair shake, given that he has said this about Deepak Chopra:
I had the pleasure of interviewing a man whose work I've admired for many years, but had never met--Dr. Deepak Chopra.
Any man who admires Deepak Chopra's work has a serious problem with reality. I've never listened to Bender's show before,…
oracknows | March 9, 2009
Regular readers of this blog know pretty much what I think of Jenny McCarthy. In brief, she's an opportunistic, scientifically ignorant but media-savvy twit whose hubris leads her to believe that her Google University education, coupled with her personal anecdotal experience, render her proclamations that vaccines cause autism and that "biomedical" quackery can cure it more convincing than all that boring science, epidemiology, and clinical trials. Indeed, her critical thinking skills are so poor that she was once a huge booster of the "Indigo Child" movement, but had to try to purge the…
oracknows | March 7, 2009I realize I'm a bit late on this, but it's hard not to take the antivaccine movement's icon and apply her own misinformation about vaccines being "toxins" injected into the bloodstream against her. In fact, doing so is far more justified, given that last week she was quoted in an interview as singing paeans of praise to one of the most deadly poisons known to humankind: Botulinum toxin. See:
I think plastic surgery is fun if it makes you feel good. I'm all for looking better, so I plan on doing whatever I want when the time comes. I love Botox, I absolutely love it. I get it minimally, so I…
oracknows | March 4, 2009As this posts I should be on an airplane winging its way to much warmer climes than where I reside in order to attend the Society of Surgical Oncology 62nd Annual Cancer Symposium. There, in Phoenix, I will eagerly absorb all the latest and greatest knowledge in the realm of cancer surgery, commune with friends whom I often don't see more than once every year or two at this meeting, and, hopefully, drink much good beer.
I'll likely still be blogging, but if I'm learning too much or having too much fun, you may see a couple of reruns again. As for any sort of meetups, I don't know if I'll have…
oracknows | February 26, 2009Busted!
All right, I give up. Since I've been sucked into the whole vaccine thing again after only one day away, I might as well highlight this simultaneously amusing and depressing tidbit. Earlier today, I wrote about a coordinated attack by the antivaccine movement on the Autism Omnibus decision two weeks ago. Given that it involved Generation Rescue, Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Deirdre Imus and her eirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology, the Huffington Post, Age of Autism, and various other antivaccine activists, I thought it pretty obvious that…
oracknows | February 26, 2009"Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."
At least, that's what Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part 3, and even though I'm not a mafia don, I can sort of relate to where he's coming from, if you know what I mean. It seems that whenever I try to get away from blogging about the nigh infinite level of stupidity and pseudoscience that emanates from the disease promotion movement (i.e., the antivaccine movement), it seems as though they somehow find a way to pull me back in. Of course, I'd rather like to think of myself as the reluctant gunslinger pulled out of retirement…
oracknows | February 24, 2009I realize that PZ seems to have all the fun when it comes to entertaining e-mails from cranks, but that doesn't mean I don't sometimes get my share of such amusement. For example, yesterday, waiting for me in the morning in my e-mail in box was this delightful gem:
From: jockdoubleday@hotmail.com
Subject: the dark force behind the global crisis
Date: February 23, 2009 12:29:07 AM GMT-05:00
To: jockdoubleday@hotmail.com
To friends of life on Earth,
There is a dark force working to undermine all ecosystems on Earth.
This force is a trans-century cult that calls itself the Illuminati -- because…
oracknows | February 24, 2009Alright, I know that, after yesterday's epic post (which was long even by Orac-ian standards), I said that I was going to try to get away from vaccine blogging for a while. I lied. Well, not really. At that time I really did mean it. But then I came across something that I just couldn't leave alone.
Regular readers of this blog know my opinion of Andrew Wakefield, namely that he is a fraud, a quack, a charlatan, and a danger to the health of autistic children and public health in general. There is, as documented in my post and elsewhere, abundant evidence to support my opinion. But apparently…
oracknows | February 23, 2009One thing that's become apparent to me so far in 2009 is that, while 2008 was the year of the antivaccinationist, 2009 is already shaping up to be a very bad year for antivaccinationists. A very bad year indeed, and this is a very, very good thing--if it can be sustained.
But first, let's take a look at last year. In 2008, Jenny McCarthy was the new and fresh celebrity face of the movement that believes that autism and all manner of other neurodevelopmental disorders are caused by vaccines and that the government and big pharma are suppressing The Truth. She had emerged in the fall of 2007…
oracknows | February 22, 2009From Canada, via Phil Plait, because in my current state I need a good laugh right about now. I'm also working on a rather large post for tomorrow about Andrew Wakefield and the Autism Omnibus, after which I hope to move on to other topics for a while. Nothing like getting back into the swing of things!
oracknows | February 21, 2009I don't know what "scuzz-wo" means, but I agree that Andrew Wakefield is one. My only nit to pick is that the puppet flirts a little too close to conflating the thimerosal scare with the MMR scare. There never was any thimerosal in the MMR vaccine. But that's just a nit, and as a blogger it's my job to pick it.
First Stephen Colbert takes on Jenny McCarthy. Now, a puppet eviscerates Andrew Wakefield. He is nothing but a joke now.
You know, though, the puppet Stephen Colbert's description of Jenny McCarthy reminds me of her son's doctor, if you know what I mean:
"Now sure, she's not the kind…
oracknows | February 20, 2009I knew it. I just knew it.
I just knew that when I finally decided to come back from my absence from this blog that something very unpleasant and sad would be waiting for me. True, there had actually been one very nasty thing that I simply had to deal with a few days ago, but that was a particularly vile and despicable human being who, believe it or not, was not John Best. That is not the case here, although the misinformation being pushed is truly disturbing.
Not surprisingly, what awaited me upon my decision to come back was posted earlier this week on that repository of antivaccine…
oracknows | February 18, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging, and even if I did my wife needs me more. Because I foresaw this coming, however, I do have a series of "Best of" reposts lined up. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. If not, I hope you enjoy them again. I don't know when I'll be back, other than maybe a brief update or two…
oracknows | February 15, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging. Because I foresaw this day coming, however, I did set up a series of "Best of" reposts to autopost for you while I am in mourning. Some I have even updated and/or spiffed up with actual editing. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. This particular one I've updated slightly.…
oracknows | February 13, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging. Because I foresaw this day coming, however, I did set up a series of "Best of" reposts to autopost for you while I am in mourning. Some I have even updated and/or spiffed up with actual editing. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. If not, I hope you enjoy them again. I don'…